Daily Archives: 3 November 2021

Success or Failure?

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In a Just the News piece concerning how the People’s Republic of China is stealing our (and Japan’s, Republic of Korea’s, and European Union’s) technology and using it to build a military establishment that can defeat us and from that compel us to do PRC bidding, FBI Director Christopher Wray was quoted as testifying before the House Committee on Homeland Security September a year ago,

I think I publicly acknowledged that the FBI now has over 2,000 counter-intelligence investigations related to China, by far the biggest chunk of our counter-intelligence portfolio, and we are opening a new Chinese counterintelligence investigation about every 10 hours.

2,000 investigations, with a new one begun every 10 hours. Wray was touting that as the level of effort the FBI is putting into the matter.

What it really looks like is the extent of the PRC espionage effort, especially since those cases and case-openings only represent what the FBI has detected. Those data seem, more accurately, to indicate the degree of success the PRC is having at stealing our data, and the lack of success we’re having in defending ourselves.

That failure is not all on the Federal government, either, for all the centrality of their role in our nation’s security. It’s also, in very significant part, on the managers of our private enterprises and their lack of effort—empirically demonstrated by how often and how easily they’re entered (72 new FBI cases every month, not all of which concern government penetrations)—in protecting their own data.

Wray’s claim does not describe any form of success at all. He describes failure, perhaps even lack of seriousness regarding the matter.

A Risky Argument

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Stephen Miller, late of the Trump administration and current member of the board of directors of America First Legal, in supporting Texas’ law prohibiting doctors from performing abortions after a fetal heartbeat has been detected, is making this argument, among others:

In every other area of public life, people are able to, through the legislatures, pass laws against sex trafficking, sexual abuse, elder abuse, against every other social ill imaginable. And yet for about half a century now, there’s been no ability by citizens in any state to work through legislatures to ensure some measure of protection for our youngest and most vulnerable citizens.

This is, at best, a weak argument, and if the lawyers arguing before the Supreme Court rely on this, they risk setting back the anti-abortion cause by decades. Under the 14th amendment, citizen status only exists for those born…in the United States; the ones we’re trying to protect aren’t born, yet, so they are not citizens.

The unborn’s right of of relevance here is the much broader one: his right to life, which he has through the simple fact of his existence and as acknowledged under that other founding document of ours, our Declaration of Independence. His status, or lack, as a citizen of the United States isn’t relevant to his right to live.

Miller should know better.